Excerpt from Bad Paper by Jake Halpern, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

All of this meant that Shafeeq had a lot riding on his new business venture. He needed his business to succeed because, say what you will about polygamy, it is not cheap. Aaron didn't know all the details of Shafeeq's situation but he understood what mattered: Shafeeq was desperate to make the whole thing work. Over the course of his investment, Aaron found and used a number of other collection agencies as well, but Shafeeq's agency embodied what he wanted: it was small, scrappy, and a little desperate.

Under the terms of his newly launched fund, Aaron would have to spend the entire investment—all $14 million of it—immediately in order to put his investors' money to work right away. This meant that he needed paper hunters and, inevitably, he turned to the man who had already supplied him with a number of very profitable portfolios: Brandon Wilson. In truth, Brandon was more than just a paper hunter. He also ran his own collection agency in Bangor, Maine; and he maintained a network of buyers, interested in old paper, who would buy Aaron's inventory when he was done with it. Brandon had a checkered past, but whatever he lacked in refinement, he more than compensated for with his knowledge of the industry. Of course, Aaron wouldn't rely on Brandon entirely, but he could make good use of him. Aaron's gut feeling about Brandon was that he was honest and that he knew what he was doing; but it did give him a moment's pause that he was entrusting his fate to a man who may have robbed the very banks for which Aaron, himself, had once worked.

Excerpted from Bad Paper by Jake Halpern. Copyright © 2014 by Jake Halpern. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.